


The Silent Woman

by yunitsa



Category: Stage Beauty (2004)
Genre: Canon Genderbending, Other, Restoration theatre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2011-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 22:58:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yunitsa/pseuds/yunitsa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edward Kynaston makes his debut, on and off the London stage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Silent Woman

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mithrigil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/gifts).



It is the delicacy that he loves, the challenge of it, each movement precise as a dance. He has grown up in an age of Puritan drabness, training hard for a day that might never come, and now he relishes every rustle of the costumes against his skin, the paint on his face, transforming him into something beautiful and new.

He’s a natural, Betterton tells him, grinning; they’ll flock to see him, these homebound cavaliers and Londoners starved for spectacle. Ned curtsies, smiling modestly, eyelashes fluttering against his cheek. Betterton does not know the years and suffering that have gone into making him a _natural_ : he only sees the perfect boy-actor for this golden age restored, a little old perhaps, but literate and flawlessly expressive.

Mere months after the theatres reopen, he first plays Olympia in Fletcher’s _Loyal Subject_. The stagelights blind him, but he can feel the audience watching, the hum of their whispers, their attention gilding each movement he – _she_ – makes. Her waiting woman is revealed as the young prince in disguise, at the play’s conclusion, yet Ned remains Olympia: he receives their applause as Olympia, and when his dresser rushes to remove his paint after the performance, Ned waves her away. He descends to greet his admirers, delicately holding up his skirts, a scented fan before his face, and sees Betterton smiling in approval.

A round-faced man in an enormous periwig bustles up to him, little notebook in hand. “Marvellous,” he says, “simply marvellous. To look upon you, I might never have guessed....Only,” he leans in closer, slightly sheepish, “if I might venture an observation, the _voice_ —”

Ned had gone nearly hoarse with rehearsing, the last week, desperate to perfect every line. He had gargled and drunk milk and honey, but he knew it had not been enough. He curses inwardly, is almost about to apologise, when he catches hold of himself and flutters his fan instead. “Thank you, sir,” he says – not the fluting tone he attempted on stage, but the resonant alto of a woman of the world, “I hope you will grace us at future performances, so that you might have the pleasure of hearing me improve.”

“Indeed.” The man flushes with enthusiasm. “I wished to ask the honour of your company – if you would care to dine with me...”

Ned seeks for another sight of Betterton in the crowd, wondering if he ought to accept such an invitation – the stranger has an honest face, and does not look on Ned with guilty hunger as some do, but is he important enough to favour? He is rescued, however, by an amused, aristocratic voice speaking behind him.

“Mr. Kynaston. _My lady._ Allow me to congratulate you.”

Ned turns as Olympia would turn, demure yet conscious of her own rank and wit, even as his heart beats faster in his padded bodice. He knows who this man is, of course: they had seen him from the wings, seated alone in the royal box, the King’s old friend and boon companion. Please him, and the play would remain open; the next time, he might not come alone.

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, hands him a glass of wine. His gloved fingers touch Ned’s, stroking up against the lace at his wrist. He is darkly handsome, wearing his own hair untouched by grey, and his eyes hold Ned captive.

“Charming,” he says, and without looking away, “Off with you now, Pepys.”

“You enjoyed the play, your grace?” Ned asks, softly enough that Villiers has to lean in to hear him.

“I enjoyed your Olympia,” he answers, stepping closer still in the press. “And intend to enjoy her again.”

He leaves no doubt as to his meaning, and Ned finds himself blushing in truth. “My lord,” he murmurs, shying away. “You know I am not really—”

Villiers raises an eyebrow. “Aren’t you?” he says, low and knowing. His hand brushes down Ned’s back, warm over the stays.

Ned hesitates a moment, torn between leaning toward and away from that pressure, and then he raises his head. They’re of a height; he can meet the Duke’s gaze directly, hold it, before fluttering his fan once more. “It would be my pleasure, your grace.”

He does not know what he expects of the Duke’s apartments, but they are as opulent as any set, gilded and hung with velvets. The bed is the biggest he has ever seen, raised on a dais and hung with embroidered curtains.

“It’s like a stage,” Ned breathes.

Villiers smiles sharply. “Exactly like a stage. Would you care to make your entrance?”

“I believe,” Ned says, daring, “that that is for your grace to do.”

The Duke sets aside the cup of wine a servant had handed him and tugs Ned close, tipping up his chin. “ _Is’t not a handsome wench?_ ” he asks, and saves Ned the necessity of answering.

Villiers unlaces his gown carefully, drawing it inch-by-inch over his shoulders and kissing the skin revealed. Ned knows it is his shoulders that most betray him, wiry and muscular, but the Duke does not seem to mind. He pulls Ned back into his lap, hiking up the voluminous skirts to reach beneath.

“I fear your grace will find an...impediment,” Ned says breathlessly.

The Duke’s chuckle is warm in his ear. “Oh, it is no impediment,” he says, taking Ned in hand briefly before moving further.

Ned has never done this before. One of the other actors had offered, but Ned had refused him – not angrily, as Mister Edward Kynaston might have done, but with a smile and a coy look. Girls had proven easy conquests, but he had been disappointed by the experience: the act spoken of as possession had left him no closer to their delicacy and soft flesh. They had looked up at him afterwards, in pleasure or impatience or concern, remaining unreachably separate.

He is still wearing the wig when Villiers takes him, the tumbled curls hiding his flushed face from anyone who might be watching. He finds he does not need to act at all as he dies.

“I hope,” Villiers tells him afterwards, stroking Ned’s curls as they sprawl loose-limbed upon the bed, “that I shall become a regular patron of your performances.”

Ned nearly laughs in realisation: that he might become the Duke of Buckingham’s mistress! He would not do it for gain alone, yet he cannot deny that the heat in the Duke’s dark eyes excites him: from the beginning, he could feel it rake through his clothes to the essence beneath. “Yes,” he says simply, leaning over to kiss him.

Villiers looks satisfied, reaching for his coat. Ned thinks that he might dress and leave, the business done, but the Duke only draws something from an inner pocket, some small object wrapped in a handkerchief. “I have a gift for you. You see how I have longed to make your acquaintance.”

It is a broach, as suitable for a lady’s breast as a gentleman’s frock-coat, and worth as much as Ned’s yearly wages. Around the jewel-encrusted centre, an inscription runs: _Never more valiant._

“You may not know _The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia_ —” Villiers begins.

Ned knows it – he read it when it was reissued five years ago, when he was fifteen and just allowed to wear his first gown. He’d had no money to buy the folio, of course, but he had gone to St. Paul’s every day and read the loose sheets in the booksellers’ stalls, varying his dress so that he might not be suspected. He had been drawn to the story of the prince disguised as an Amazon lady, the concealment so convincing as to fool his own cousin, win the love of a king, and even overcome the narrative itself, which called him nothing but _she_. Yet he had been Pyrocles as well as Zelmane throughout: both were true.

“It’s beautiful,” Ned tells the Duke, accepting it as the seal of their bargain.

Preparing to go on stage that evening, he had wanted to fool them all – to present the perfect illusion of a woman, so that they might forget the artifice and see only the princess and her beauty. When Betterton offered to stage Jonson’s _Epicoene_ next season, Ned had hesitated, dreading the moment of rude unmasking. He sees now that he was wrong: that the illusion _is_ the beauty. They come to see a man counterfeit a woman, and he is to hold them there in their excitement as on the brink of the little death, just at the knife-edge of being taken in.

Otherwise, it would not be theatre but mere prurience. One might as well have female actresses on the stage.

**Author's Note:**

> William Davenant, not Thomas Betterton, was head of the Duke's Company until 1668, but since the film uses Betterton, so did I. Edward Kynaston did star in _The Loyal Subject_ and _Epicoene; or, The Silent Woman_ in 1660/1 - though in the latter, he also played male parts.


End file.
